90 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



the market with very little corn; and I maintain that you have 

 made the cheapest pork that can be made in the United States and 

 in the world, and you have got your hay besides. 



Q. Describe the kind of soil you grow alfalfa on as regards 

 soil content. 



Mr. Gose — Well, I have no sour land on my farm. You would 

 counteract that with lime. I have never inoculated any soil until 

 last spring. I hauled out 15 bushels of dirt from the low land to 

 the high land and inoculated it. The kind of soil I have sown on 

 consists pretty nearly of every kind of soil in our county. On my 

 farm I am growing alfalfa on what you would call hardpan. 



Mr. Crabtree — What kind of stone do you find on the higher 

 land that surrounds your farm — limestone, sandstone, or what? 



Mr. Gose — I do not find any kind. If you will come and show 

 us where to find some you will be right in it. We have prairie 

 land and timber land, but no stone at all. 



Q. Do you wait until the alfalfa blooms to clip it back? 



Mr. Gose — No, you will lose everything if you do that. The 

 first crop may never bloom. If I had time I would never let al- 

 falfa bloom at all. That may sound strange to some of you old 

 alfalfa men. I would have five crops instead of four if I never let 

 it bloom. My fourth crop was cut in October. It was about 12 

 inches high, and it is as green now as it would be standing out in 

 the pasture. I have sixty pigs that came in September. I will tell 

 you how I am feeding them. Those sixty pigs eat all of that al- 

 falfa they want. Then I give them sixty ears of corn in the morn- 

 ing and sixty ears in the evening. In addition to that, in the morn- 

 ing I give them a little slop made of two parts of shorts and one 

 part bran. I give them this slop instead of water. I make it about 

 as thick as buttermilk, and give them three large bucketsful of 

 it. In order to make the slop go round, and to keep the big ones 

 from getting it all, I pour in one bucketful of slop and then shell 

 a half bushel of corn and scatter some on the slop; then put in 

 some more slop, then some more corn, etc. I got 50 of those pigs 

 on the scales 30 days ago and they weighed 2,020 pounds ; and I 

 weighed them again just before coming up here, and they weighed 

 2,700 pounds. Now that is not much, but you know that some pigs 

 in the winter stop on us entirely. If that increase can be kept up 

 through the winter we will be doing well. 



